Quest means business reading for leading article

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Quest Means Business: Reading for Leading and Quality Education Richard Quest presents two very fascinating shows on CNN, one of my favorite channels in addition to BBC and EuroNews. The two shows are: Quest Means Business and Best of Quest. Both shows are informative and of a very high quality not only to those who are interested in businesses and the business news but to anyone who would like to get to know what is going on around us in the modern world. There are different items about the usual stuff related to businesses: profits, losses, mergers, expansions, retractions, shares, etc. I am interested in everything in the shows but there is one item which is of particular interest for me. This is the interview or discussion item with a leading business personality, usually a CEO, and sometimes a creative person who is adding something new to the business sector in terms of a new product, service, or interesting and innovative insights. There is almost always a question by Richard Quest to the interviewee: what is the book are you reading for leading? This is a great insight about reading. We do not read only for pleasure or information; we read to be real and effective leaders. This entails that reading enhances leadership. This is very true not about business leaders but about every leader in all walks of life and anywhere in the world. If you go to history and read about the great leaders, you will find that the great leaders in the human history were really great readers. The question in the show is very pertinent to the show and to the audience. If you want to be an effective leader, you really need to be a great reader. In addition to the numerous joys of reading, the act of reading offers insights, some are very deep, about how to deal with people and events and how to handle emergencies, to name but few benefits of reading for leading. Many of the answers given by the business leaders in the shows are about reading books; some are unrelated to the business sector but they are related, in many cases, to human behavior and human mentality. Still they are very useful and insightful for leadership. This concept of “Reading for Leading” is of great importance for higher education in the modern world. Higher education cannot be reduced to “training for jobs” only. This training is only one function of higher education institutions but it cannot be the only function. Education, and in particular higher education, is a great deal more than training for jobs. We need leaders, creators and innovators in addition to qualified graduates to fill the jobs available on the job markets. It is really a mockery of higher education to reduce this education to “training for jobs”, which are mostly simple jobs for which the students do not need to study for four or five years to be qualified for them. It may be quite sufficient to have “job training programs” for a reasonable period of time, depending upon the nature of the job; this period is usually measured in months than in years. Page 1 of 3


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